Samsung 930XT - RDP

[Willott]

Right, this is a kind of Thin Client / RDP question, so apologies if this is not quite the right place.

I've got one of the above units on demo, and it's quite nice. I'm just having a little difficulty setting it up as I'd like, so I'm wondering if A) anyone can solve the issue below, B) anyone can suggest another way of doing this full stop (with the same hardware/software).

I've currently got the machine auto logging on with a custom shell, which is a script that runs MSTSC with a specified .rdp file (with some bits to stop the annoying prelogon screen authentication bit, which would not doubt confuse our kids and staff). If MSTSC is closed (it if logged out, or cancelled before logon) the script restarts and reconnects, taking it back to the TS logon screen. This is fairly close to how I think it should work.

There's one niggling thing - MSTSC will close if you don't logon to the TS within a certain amount of time. I can't find anywhere to change this time (spent a few hours googling yesterday, so getting on with PBX devel today). MSTSC then restarts and goes back to the logon for the TS, however, this activity would stop the screens going into power saving, so will reduce the power savings made using TC (and it's bloody annoying!).

I've just put in for an Axel demo unit, and from the looks of it, that's completely different, so will be interesting to see how that behaves, but I'd still like to get XPe way working, just incase I have to go with those at some point. Also on a side point, does thinstation/A.N.Other linux distro cope well with this (thinking of recycling some of our older boxes [read PIII] to be thin clients in the odd classroom).

Cheers

Will

[nathanbowes]

Hi Will, I have recently taken receipt of 10 of these Samsung 930XT's. I had hoped they would work in the way you mention and am currently struggling to get them working. Did you ever find an answer to your question? We have 30 HP T5530's which work perfectly and have a simple way to clone them. I would be interested to know how you scripted the reconnection and how you got rid of that pesky pre-authentication screen.

Nath

[Butuz]

To be honest I think you'll find the Axel unit to be far easier to configure and far easier "in use".

Butuz

[Willott]

Never managed to sort out the disconnection issue. If you PM me your email address I'll send you the vbs and the rdp config file. I think that's where I got the preauth to stop (though it may have been something within the TS settings - can't quite remember). I ended up going with the Axel thin clients, and they're lovely!

Cheers

[Axel]

Thanks Will, Butuz.

Nathan, I appreciate it may be a little late if you can't return these devices, but please let us know if we can send you an Axel M80f to compare against your other thin clients for next time...

[localzuk]

The problem is how terminal services presents the logon box - the server has a timeout for logon inactivity. So, when a client presents the logon box, it is simply presenting what the terminal server presents, timeouts and all.

The only way I can think that you could work around this would be with some form of pre-authentication layer. ie. a user logs in to the machine locally and then those details are sent by the client to the terminal server. That way, the RDP session isn't actually presented to the machine until a user has logged in.

That said, we only have 5 of the WinXPe machines in our school, so I haven't looked at them in a particularly thorough way. Most of our thin clients use either ThinStation or HP's linux (based on debian). Both of these allow the screen to go to sleep.

[powdarrmonkey]

The problem is how terminal services presents the logon box - the server has a timeout for logon inactivity. So, when a client presents the logon box, it is simply presenting what the terminal server presents, timeouts and all.

Recent versions of the TS client (v6 onwards perhaps) present their own logon dialog which sidesteps this problem rather neatly. But presumably in a thin client it's difficult to upgrade, I've never used them.

[gsk]

Hi,

I know this thread is a bit old now, but hopefully this will help someone else using an XPe thin client.

We've had these Samsung 930XT thin clients in for a little while now and are finding them really good. Our other thin clients are ChipPC XtremePCs and JackPCs. The Samsung units are a hundred times better in a lot of ways!

To fix the problems the OP was having, I set the shell to 'mstsc.exe c:\rdp.rdp'. This brought up several problems. The first was that the RDP connection would ask for credentials before it would try and find the terminal server. To stop RDP asking for credentials, open the rdp file in notepad and add in the following line of text:

enablecredsspsupport:i:0

Or you can copy and paste the following into a text file and rename it as a .rdp file:

screen mode id:i:2
desktopwidth:i:1280
desktopheight:i:1024
session bpp:i:32
winposstr:s:0,3,0,0,800,600
full address:s:Terminal_Server
compression:i:1
keyboardhook:i:2
audiomode:i:0
redirectprinters:i:1
redirectcomports:i:0
redirectsmartcards:i:0
redirectclipboard:i:1
redirectposdevices:i:0
displayconnectionbar:i:0
autoreconnection enabled:i:1
authentication level:i:0
enablecredsspsupport:i:0
prompt for credentials:i:0
negotiate security layer:i:1
remoteapplicationmode:i:0
alternate shell:s:
shell working directory:s:
disable wallpaper:i:0
disable full window drag:i:0
allow desktop composition:i:1
allow font smoothing:i:1
disable menu anims:i:0
disable themes:i:0
disable cursor setting:i:0
bitmapcachepersistenable:i:1
gatewayhostname:s:
gatewayusagemethod:i:0
gatewaycredentialssource:i:4
gatewayprofileusagemethod:i:0
devicestoredirect:s:*
drivestoredirect:s:DynamicDrives

The next problem was that once the connection timed out from the logon screen, the shell wouldn't auto-restart, even though the registry settings had been set appropriately. To fix this I used Minlogon which made the thin client auto-login and would allow the custom shell to restart.

At this point you need to make sure that you have the Ctrl-Alt-Del fix (attached) installed so that you can use the task manager to make changes to your build if you need to (to change the network name after deployment for instance).

Once all of the settings are applied and written to the EWF, the terminal can be imaged and ghosted to the others in next to no time.

The only problem this leaves, which I haven't been able to fix, is that the shell starts too quickly for the NIC to have initialised properly. This means that there will be a connection error on the first attempt (and subsequent attempts within the first ~20 seconds). After that though, it's fine and will just keep reconnecting once it's timed out.

My thin clients were supplied by Axess Systems who were very helpful and absolutely smashed the prices of all the competition. I would definitly recommend them. Their website is a bit pants, but they are very good with anything relating to virtualisation.

[nut-ed]

Sounds like you should apply for a job at Samsung and finish off their development !

Out of interest what problems were you having with ChipPC thin clients....?

[gsk]

Hehe, not sure about that. I just thought it might be useful for someone in a similar position.

I don't think I ever really had a problem with the chip pcs until I got these XPe machines. They're so easy to configure exactly as you want, and being windows registry to sort it all out, it's really customisable. I particularly like the enhanced write filter that gives you a fresh image every time you boot. It's given me ideas to try other things out and might put some in as whiteboard machines or as community Internet access machines.